City councilors have proposed several options for the 94-unit Parco Dello Zingaro Mobile Home Park, a 16-acre cluster of "pre-fab" homes that have served as a cheap alternative to the surrounding growth for decades.

Preserving the park could include city-funded incentives for the park's owner, such as tax incentives, loans or grants to "promote the maintenance" of the park.

The city also could provide support for a resident-owned community (ROC) similar to Boulder's Mapleton Mobile Home Park, wherein residents purchase the park outright or through the assistance of a nonprofit or housing authority and forms an owners association to manage the property.

Another option is to adjust existing zoning to create mobile home-only zoning on the property, a process where the city would purchase the development rights "to account for future development potential."

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First-time homeowners in Boulder County have typically avoided mobile homes parks. But these manufactured homes just might be part of the solution to Louisville's — and perhaps the county's — affordable housing crisis, officials say.

"Affordable housing is certainly something that is critical," Councilman Chris Leh said Tuesday. "It's something that everyone recognizes as increasingly difficult in Louisville, and it's not going to get any easier."

Mobile home park owners face pressure to redevelop their properties as the community around them grows and land values increase, replacing the trailers with denser, more expensive homes.

"A number of us worry about what the property owner will do with that property in the long term," Leh added. "It's the right time to do this."

In the last three years, the number of single-family homes in Boulder County for sale less than $250,000 has dropped 72 percent, and the number of attached dwellings for less than $150,000 has declined by 87 percent.

Dire times for affordable living in Boulder County has led housing officials, who in recent years have scrambled to develop more low-income housing as waitlists grow longer, to embrace the once-stigmatized mobile home.

"Generally we can say that in addition to the work we do all over Boulder County, the Boulder County Housing Authority is supportive of efforts that can help preserve existing affordable housing where and when possible," Jim Williams, Boulder County Housing and Human Services spokesman, wrote in an email.

Rising costs

There are currently 3,600 mobile homes across 25 parks in the county, according to the Boulder County Treasurer's Office.

Officials in recent months have been flooded with applications for Louisville's $77.8 million Kestrel affordable housing project, where more than 600 sit on a waitlist for one of the project's 200 units.

"These are complicated issues," Councilman Jeff Lipton said. "There's lots of balances that need to be weighed. If there was a way to kind of have those interests come together and the area be designated somehow as an area where we want affordable housing, it could be better for us."

The average single-family home price in Louisville last year was $627,938, according to an affordability study out of Longmont — a joint effort of Amy Aschenbrenner, CEO of the Longmont Association of Realtors, and Kyle Snyder, of Land Title Guarantee Company — that determined "there are no entry level housing options" left in Boulder County.

Louisville is second in the county only to Boulder, which had an average single-family home price soar to $1,066,674 in 2016.

As home ownership continues to rise out of reach for many throughout the county, housing authority officials have shifted to preserving mobile home parks.

A 2015 report titled "Affordable Housing Need and the Role of Manufactured Housing" found that such housing has consistently provided an affordable alternative for low- and moderate-income households in the Denver metro area.

In the Denver metro region, the median monthly costs for manufactured homeowners is $680, compared to $1,540 for all homeowners.

Average prices for mobile homes in Boulder County are not recorded by the county housing authority or local real estate firms.

Parco Dello Zingaro

City officials recognizing a lack of affordable housing often leads to a chill on development, said Parco Dello Zingaro owner Keith Cowan, who in recent years has grown wary of restrictive building codes.

"After dealing with several cities," said Cowan, who owns multiple mobile home parks across the Front Range, "there are times something is said about lack of affordable housing and the very first thing (the city says) is that you can't build anymore."

Fears of Cowan razing the park in favor of more costly townhomes are misplaced, he said. A proponent of affordable housing, he has long sought to expand his park to more mobile homes.

"My plans are exactly the opposite (of redeveloping the park)," he said. "I want to build more, but council and city zoning will not allow that to happen. If you want to restrict it and not allow it to expand, then don't stand and say we need more affordable housing."

For typical mobile home parks, an owner operates the park as a business, leasing the land to residents who own the homes and accessory improvements on the land, according to the Rocky Mountain Home Association, a trade association representing the modular and manufactured housing industry.

For many mobile home owners, the split-tenure ownership structures allows a more affordable option for entering into the home ownership market and allows some of the benefits of home ownership, such as having an ability to build equity and have control over the improvements to the home, Louisville officials say.

However, preserving Parco Dello Zingaro as a mobile home park could stunt the property owner's chance at new revenue.

The property could be subdivided into lots at 7,000 square feet or larger and developed with single- or multi-family residences at a density of one unit per 3,500 square feet of lot area, according to a report drafted by Louisville officials.

If the city's current 16-acre mobile home park were to redevelop, according to the report — excluding 15 percent of land area for public land dedication and an additional 15 percent for road infrastructure — staff estimates that a future development could yield up to 140 residential units.

"That's something that might well alarm a lot of people in Louisville," Leh said. "We have a nice community in there and the idea of that many units is probably not what a lot of people would like."

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